“Their unfinishedwork,” I cut in, the words sharp. “Funny how that was his first priority.”
“Because he knew how much it mattered!” Her voice cracks, frustration rare and raw. “He gave me a chance to continue their legacy—”
“Under his careful supervision.” I cut her off. “Tell me, does he still review your lab reports personally? Suchspecial attentionfrom the great Alexander Darkmoor.”
Her breath stutters, while tears spill silently down her cheeks. My sweet, sensitive sister.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I just can’t stomach it tonight. Their pity and rehearsed condolences.”
“I understand.” She dabs at her eyes with careful fingers. “But maybe . . . maybe it would help to have someone there who actually cares?” She hesitates, then adds, gentler, “Dominic asked about you again. He’ll be there tonight.”
My throat locks. Dom’s most recent note still sits unopened in my drawer, stacked atop a dozen others. I haven’t seen him since the funeral. That night, he’d shown up at my door with a bottle of expensive whiskey, and a vial of Silverhaze that promised oblivion. Not because he was cruel, but because that’s how he survived his own demons. Numbness as mercy. Distraction as love.
“He’s been sending flowers,” Luna continues. “The ones you won’t acknowledge. Every time I put them in water, you toss them in the trash.”
The truth stings. Once, I would have clung to those gestures. My throat forms a protest, but Luna continues.
“And that necklace last week? I looked it up, and it’s worth more than some people make in a year. Plus, you’re still ignoring his calls—”
“Because every time I answer, he tells me I need to stop.” I snap. “He said grief was making me paranoid. That I needed to let it go.” I laugh again, sharp and strained. “As if Dominic Blackwood has ever let go of a single goddamn thing in his life.”
“Or maybe he’s trying to protect you—”
“The only way he knows how.” My voice softens, despite everything. “By making it disappear. That’s what Kian taught him, isn’t it? If it hurts, bury it. If you can’t bury it, set it on fire.”
“He loves you,” Luna says gently. “Six years, Aria. That has to mean something.”
“Why the sudden push for me to see Dom? I thought you didn’t even like him.”
“I don’t,” Luna admits. “But he made you happy. And he loves you in his own broken, backward way. I know you miss him, even if you won’t say it out loud.” Her fingers twist in the hem of her dress. “You weren’t there when the whispers started about you after the funeral, people calling it a ‘tragic breakdown.’ Dom defended you. Still does. Even after you shut him out.”
“We’re not together,” I say, but it lands empty. How do you sever something that’s etched into your bones?
That night at The Den, when I couldn’t stop crying, he’d pulled me into one of the private rooms. But this wasn’t like our usual storms, where power and pain bled into clarity. Where submission gave way to control. Where I let him strip me down until I forgot how to think, or marked him until my darkness had somewhere to go.
This grief was different. It didn’t break. It just . . . lingered. And I watched it terrify him.
He held me anyway. Let me destroy his shirt with tears and spit fury about conspiracies and cover-ups while his hands trembled against my hair. For the first time in six years, Dominic Blackwood didn’t know how to fix me.
He tried everything. Another drink. Another dose of pain disguised as salvation. But this wasn’t something we could beat out of each other.
“You don’t have to love me. Just don’t leave me.”The words had cracked in his throat, raw, unscripted and terrifyingly real. The moment they escaped, he flinched, like he’d exposed something he couldn’t stuff back in. And maybe he had. He must’ve seen it in my eyes that I was already retreating. That this grief was taking me somewhere he couldn’t follow.
He’d said things like this before, always in moments when control slipped through his fingers. Little confessions in the dark after particularly brutal nights. Whispered fears when he thought I was sleeping. But he’d never sounded quite this scared. I knew, abstractly, that it stemmed from something deeper—scars left by Kian’s particular brand of fatherhood, wounds that still bled when pressed. But Dom never talked about it, and I never pushed. We both preferred our pain more tangible.
I remember touching his face then, and how he leaned into my hand like a man starving. But I still left.Hadto leave. Because staying meant drowning, and letting him pull me under until I forgot why I was angry and terrified. Until I forgot everything but him.
And I couldn’t forget. Not this time.
“Aria?” Luna’s voice cuts through the memory, uncertain. “Did you even hear what I just said?”
I blink, realizing I’ve been staring through the skyline, not at it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You know what Mother would say if she saw you like this?” Luna’s voice dips to a whisper. “She’d say you’re too brilliant to waste away up here.”
The words hit their mark with devastating accuracy. Mom never wasted anything—not time, not resources, not potential. Even her love was measured and calculated, doled out in careful portions meant to shape me into something worthy of the Ellis name.Brilliantwas her highest praise and her sharpest weapon. When she said it, pride and resentment twisted tighter in my chest, two vines strangling the same root.
But she was right about one thing. Hiding never fixed anything. Even if she’d meant it as another lesson, another way to turn weakness into strategy. I close my eyes, seeing her disappointed frown. Even now, I can hear her voice.
